Art For Art’s Sake #304: Bringing The Bwah-Ha-Ha To The Justice League With Kevin Maguire

by Richard Bruton

Well hello, and welcome to another bit of the wonderful comic art I’ve been looking at this week – it’s Art For Art’s Sake!

This week, we’ll end with a little bit of Kevin Maguire‘s art from back in 1987’s Justice League, still one of the funniest superhero books there’s ever been. But before that, a little bit of this —

Sam Kieth

Dupuy-Berberian

Bill Sienkiewicz

Al Williamson

Thing vs. Hulk by Greg Smallwood

Jacob Cabot

Dave McKean

Watchman by Dave Gibbons

Don Simpson – King Kong

Philippe Druillet

Brian Bolland

Frank Quitely – Flex Mentallo #2 – 1996 – Original and final cover art

Sal Buscema and inker Dan Green from Defenders #17 (1974) – first appearance of the Wrecking Crew – something so good about the blockiness of the Wrecking Crew figures there.

Anna Morozova‘s Barbarella

Wally Wood – Daredevil Volume 1 #7

Fred Hembeck (doing the classic Kevin Maguire Justice League cover)

Which gives me an excuse to roll this out — still a favourite – art by Kevin Maguire from Justice League #1 – 1987 —

Now, although I already did an Art For Art’s Sake featuring more of Kevin’s own versions of this cover (here) and the many homages to it he’s done over the years (always a true indicator that it’s an iconic piece of artwork), I was recently re-reading the series and found myself enjoying it just as much in 2025 as I did back in 1987.

JM DeMatteis and Keith Giffen brought a lightness and silliness to superheroes that young me just hadn’t seen from either Marvel or DC back then, and it was instantly a favourite. And in Maguire, they’d found an artist able to bring all that lightness and silliness to the page so perfectly. We had the Batman/Guy Gardner ‘one punch’ thing, we had the Martian Manhunter’s Oreo fixation, we had the childlike innocence of Captain Marvel, the sarcasm and world-weariness of Black Canary, and the Blue Beetle/Booster Gold bromance and the whole, ‘B’wah, Ha, Ha, Ha’ thing going on. Yep, this was wonderful work, work that’s well worth looking out for.

So, let’s take a look back at some wonderful moments from the first few issues….

Here’s Kevin’s own ‘one minute later’ cover version…